About Me

Friday, 1 March 2013

Beware Spirits From The Past

In the
gathering gloom of UK
politics a grey figure has emerged from the past to remind us of our
errors. It is not a ghost, although it
might be to many, it is Ken Loach the determined working class and resolute
Left Wing media man, educated at a good grammar school in Nuneaton and then St.
Peter’s College, Oxford
(see Wikipedia).

This is a
college founded in 1929 to improve accessibility to less wealthy students and
numbers Ken among its notable alumni along with Rex Hunt, Governor of The
Falkland Islands in 1982 during the war there, Mark Carney the new Governor of
the Bank of England and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, famous for his interest in
organic and greenie grown foods and cooking.

Ken went in
to the theatre and then became a protégé of the BBC in the early sixties and
was noted for plays about social problems and the film “Kes”. It is said that he has a particular view of
realism. The latest is that he wants the
Labour Party to return to its past principles and invokes the Spirit of 1945.

But he was
not an adult then, in fact just nine and so an impressionable teenager in the
early 1950’s. Then he did a couple of
years in the Royal Air Force. Quite what
or where I do not know but what I do is that National Service, far from
creating a citizenry obedient and loyal to current authority had the effect on
very many better educated recruits of sending them in entirely the opposite
direction.

Of the less
well educated, many had experienced only an Elementary School education before
leaving and took the view that they had been short changed in life and wanted
the State to protect and ensure their jobs and incomes and to provide them with
decent housing at affordable rentals.

The problem
was how to do it in a state that was losing its empire, had much of its
infrastructure and capital equipment in an ageing and worn condition in a world
where many of its basic industries had begun to feel the effects of serious
competition.

Many of the
Left looked East to Communism, a few others looked West to the USA, but most
hoped for some sort of easy compromise of the politics of the centre to keep
the show on the road and deliver on some of the promises made. What too few realised, especially on the Left
was that we were about to undergo radical changes in both the shape of the
world and its economic structures.

One
consequence of this was that whilst the fervent Left were peddling one kind of
“realism” what was happening out there was far removed by any standard of
reality. What is happening today is
almost a parallel to this in that the economy and society we are in bears
little relationship not just to 1945 but 1985 as well.

Yet Ken and
fellow followers of a long past world of the Left are still a key to the
central part of the Labour Party mind, a little like the military men who in
1883 invoked the Spirit of Waterloo of 1815 when Britain took over Egypt. This is not gook news for any of us.

There was
one great success of the years of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. The aim of the Left was to leave a scorched
earth for any incoming government. This
does seem to have worked all too well as the Coalition flounders and
fails. But we are now left with shrunken
political parties in a shrinking world and a corrupt electoral system which is
unlikely to deliver policies that a majority of the voters want.

What may
happen if we finish up with a Labour and Liberal Democrat Coalition in 2015 that
in reality does not reflect the voters realities? We do not know but can only make a guess. It could be the break up of the United Kingdom, an unintended consequence of
Scottish Labour Left Wing thinking, it could be the final wreck of the UK economy, if
it is not already under way by then.

It could be
more like 793 than 1945 only the ones taking over will be a lot more greedy and
a lot less nice and understanding than the Vikings who raided Lindisfarne.